Governments let NSA tap cables on their territory, latest Snowden revelations show by David Meyer.
David has a great summary of recent Snowden leaks that make it clear that multiple governments were cooperating with the NSA tapping efforts.
From the post:
Who’s in? Some of these “third-party”, non-Five Eyes partners, as listed in other Snowden documents: Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Assuming that the storage issues could be solved, the NSA could at the very least support itself by selling copies of intercepted conversations, email, etc. On the open market with eBay style bidding.
How much would you pay to hear a conversation between Obama and Putin?
Would not solve the privacy issue but would make the NSA less of a drain on US taxpayers.